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May 2, 2011

La Fête du Fromage - Tome Fleurie de Brebis

This generous, slightly battered wedge of fromage de brebis was brought to me by some friends who took a skiing trip to the Hautes Alpes in February. Un vrai cadeau!

Tome Fleurie de Brebis has a heady mélange of flavors; rich and meaty and yeasty combined with a slight piquancy and a smooth nuttiness. It is a complex cheese, yet the flavors are well balanced and truly delicious.

It is produced from unpasteurized ewe's milk at the Fromagerie de la Durance. The gritty grey rind is the happy home to cheese mites, so I would recommend cutting it off before eating.

We tasted it with some local white wine, a blend of Marsanne and Roussanne grapes. Not a good match at all! Some white wine from the Alps would be much better.

If the rind is hard to the touch and looks like it is made out of particle board I tend not to eat it, so that leaves cheese like Brie and Camembert to be safe. This looks very interesting to try though.Love your page of cheese you have tried!

About eating the rind, there is less risk (of any kind -bacterial, allergenic,...) than eating most other foods. In particular the paste of cheese (cause of the few cheese-originated listeria infections).

I could start a really long explanation with peer-reviewed references but instead:

I have eaten the rind of every cheese I have tried (well over 1000 in a 10 year period -plus those when I was littleI without ever any problem. So has my wife.(I should say we are healthy, I have no allergy, and she has few. The typical lactose-intolerance problem with cheese is due to the paste.)

Eating the rind is a must for understanding cheese in depth, skipping it makes you lose a big part of the experience and is overall a negative approach in many respects. Plus, it supports misunderstanding of cheese, and food in general.

A cheese's paste may be better enjoyed without the rind, definitely, but then (please) cut the rind and eat it separately before. It is often enjoyable if only for the discovery, learning experience. Some rinds may be really good but just not combine that well with the paste, they often contrast undesirably, in gruyere the rind is very meaty, or if you want to melt it, or in a brillat-savarin it may be quite strong, pungent, and ammonia-scented but enjoyable on a different level, the rind of many washed rind cheeses turns bitter with time which definitely mars the experience of the paste, but is quite fun an introduction to actually eating the cheese -it is always small amounts.

Really, mimolette and their mites, gruyere, goudas (ok, you may carefully remove the wax... :), abbey, reblochon, goat, soft, pecorini, smear-ripened, manchegos (yes, the paint), saint-nectaire, tomme de Savoie,... please put the fun back into the rind, you will find how much you missed.

Of course you may still discard the rind if you know it and just want the paste, it's all a question of finding a balance, a matter of average attitude. But if you wonder whether to eat the rind (if you do not know how it tastes and fear it), then you probably should.

Paul

PS: And please Loulou, on this topic, do promote a more rational attitude toward food. I guess you are afraid that mean people sue you for some imaginary disease due to eating rind... But please at least do eat it yourself.

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